Dear Preachers:

The generations before us were a traveling folk. Except for Native Americans, we all came from other places to be here. (It is believed that even Native Americans arrived here during the Ice Age, 20-30,000 years ago.)  The number of vowels in my last name gives evidence to my ancestral origins.  The “old folks,” so they seemed through my boyhood eyes, left the poverty of southern Italy for America  – the “Land of Promise.”  And, despite the poverty and prejudice my grandparents’ generation endured, their sacrifices bore fruit for their children.  Here we are, a couple generations later, educated, employed, well fed (perhaps too well fed!) and settled in “our country.”

Even as a boy I could tell that my immigrant grandparents, uncles and aunts, as settled as they seemed, still had a nostalgia for the “old country.”  Even though they had arrived a long time ago, they still hadn’t fully arrived. They didn’t speak their new language well, the customs were strange, the food unfamiliar and they told stories of being misunderstood. At Ellis Island, where they arrived, the other immigrants from Europe and Asia thought the new wave of immigrants from Italy ate worms. They had never seen spaghetti before!  The trip from the old place to the new was hard on all those immigrants, as it is for the most recent arrivals to this country. Recalling the tales from my immigrant grandparents helps me focus on the issues of new arrivals to our shores or across our borders. The name calling and accusations today echo what arrivals in the past heard. It seems nothing changes very much.

The Israelites were also a traveling people, and we can tell from today’s first reading that they had a harder trip to make. They had left slavery behind, but their arrival to the next place, the Promise Land, was long delayed and the trip to get there was arduous and tempted their faith. They were forty years in the desert.  They didn’t like what they left but, as the reading from Exodus shows, at this point of their travels they were very discouraged. Each day was a struggle and the present moment looked impossible. They were thirsty and they were beginning to doubt Moses and their God.  Where was God in this hard place?  The name of the place summarized this moment of their journey: Massah means “Proof”; Meribah means “Contention.”  That’s how hard the place was!  The trip was too long, with too many camping grounds and too many frustrations and failures. Was God with them?  Judging from their condition, it didn’t seem so to the Israelites. 

We can identify with the people wandering in the desert, for we too have known similar moments on our  journeys.  There have times when we have lamented, “How long must I endure this?”  “When will it end?”  “Can I/we make it?”  We know what we have left behind and we are not sure what lies ahead.  Will it be worth the struggle?  We have known the hard places; we have known the rock at Horeb. 

We can understand the temptation the Israelites had to return to the old places and the old ways.  We  have dreams we want to see come to fruition for ourselves and or family, yet at the rock, the hard place, those dreams feel flimsy. So, for example: We would rather go back to silence and getting along, than to more open communication and the pain that may cause.  We would rather stay in a relationship that is not working, than risk a break and go forward to new, uncharted territory.  We would rather stay with an abusive spouse, than choose the scary terrain of independence. We would rather continue old habits and  dependencies than go through the sacrifice change requires.                              

Lent urges us to shift to a traveling mode.  Lent invites us to set out; to say to ourselves, “I have got to change, I have got to make this journey.”  We are being invited to leave behind what is not working and not good for us and go to a place up ahead.  Like the Israelites, we start out making the changes we must, but the road is long, uncertain and sometimes very hard to stick to, so our resolution dissolves and we look back to where we used to be and turn around. 

The experience of the Israelites in the desert reminds us how much we need God – day by day. Today’s Exodus story reveals that at the very hard place, at the rock of Horeb, God will provide the refreshment we need.  God tells Moses to strike the rock with his staff.  From the rock water to quench the people’s thirst flows.  Is the same possible for us: that from the very hard places of struggle and temptation God can draw water for us and refresh us?  How?  By the steady hand of a friend; the presence of one with us by the bedside of a loved one; in the support group that encourages and challenges us to stay with the program so we can break an addiction or destructive habit; the voice of confrontation from a loved one, who encourages us to be better than we have been.  The initial experience has the sound and feel of the rock; but then, through God and God’s instruments, we discover that we are at the rock at Horeb and God has made living water flow to quench the thirst only God can quench. The Israelites, we are told, quarreled and tested God at the hard place and asked, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”  To their sunrise, they found that God was.

The story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman is a familiar one – perhaps too familiar.  It is an important story for John and he spends a lot of time narrating the exchange between the two.  (There’s a shorter option in the Lectionary, but why violate the storyteller’s intent by reading a chopped-up version?  For the sake of brevity will we sacrifice the dramatic development in the account?  I plan on inviting the congregation to sit down and listen to a good tale.)  Because the story is so familiar I find myself leaning heavily on John P. Pilch’s input for new insights  (Cf. Below). 

Pilch notes some “irregularities” in the story.  He says the Mediterranean world is divided according to gender: women have their places in the home and kitchen; men have theirs in the fields, market place and the gate.  The well is common to both, but women and men go there at different times of the day.  Women go in the morning and evening. The Samaritan woman is there at noon – something is wrong.  Is she avoiding the other women of the town?  Does she have a “reputation” and is shunned by them?  She is at a well, at noon and she is alone, speaking to a strange man in a public place.

The conversation between Jesus and the woman raises even the suspicions of Jesus’ disciples.  When it is over she goes to another public place to tell those gathered there (men at the market?) about her conversation with Jesus. Pilch notes the subversions that are occurring in the story.  John is giving new roles to women in his community.  He fashions the conversation between Jesus and the woman in a seven-part dialogue; each speaks seven times. Is a new creation story being told in this seeming unimportant moment and place?  Just as God created light on the first day, so Jesus leads the woman out of her darkness into light, to a deeper understanding of his identity. Did you notice the growth in the woman’s awareness of Jesus, revealed in the names she gives him?  She begins by calling him “a Jew,” then moves to “prophet,” then, she tells the town people, “Could he possibly be the Christ?”  Later they call him “the savior of the world.”

The woman gets more time in this story than anyone else in John’s gospel.  She grows rapidly in her insight about Jesus, and he commissions her to go call her husband and return. She announces Jesus’ presence to the people of the town and is, therefore, the first disciple in John’s gospel. 

In our first reading the people grumble against Moses in the desert.  They are thirsty and demand water.  Under God’s direction Moses strikes the rock and water flows.  In the gospel Jesus, the new Israel, is thirsty and stops at a well in Samaria. There he receives a good reception, first from the woman, then from the townspeople.  Jesus finds rejection among his own; among Samaritans, he is welcomed.  He reflects God’s thirst for people, willingness to go outside the usual religious and social boundaries, and God’s desire to give life giving water to anyone thirsty enough to seek it.  The woman in today’s story has no name.  Perhaps she represents all of us, regardless of race, gender or nationality, who acknowledge our thirst for more than we can provide for ourselves. 

The entire exchange between the woman and Jesus is characterized by respect, openness, even mutual challenge. But there is an underlaying current throughout the story – Jesus’ compassion.  He accepts the woman as she is.  She, on her part, reveals an honest probing into Jesus’ identity; more than we find among Jesus’ disciples.  Two strangers meet at an unusual place, and their honest dialogue brings one to a deeper knowledge of herself and the offer of a new and deeper life. 

Is it possible then that, when we meet a stranger and are willing to put aside all the political, social, ethnic and religious barriers that normally separate people, and enter into open dialogue, that we too might come to the life-giving experience the woman had and discover God in the stranger?

Click here for a link to this Sunday’s readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030826.cfm

QUOTABLE

A popular proverb says: “Familiarity breeds contempt.”  In the case of Bible stories, familiarity blunts sensitivity and often blocks proper understanding.  Anyone familiar with Mediterranean culture immediately identifies shocking and jarring elements in this story.

----John J. Pilch, commenting on today’s gospel story in: THE CULTURAL WORLD OF JESUS: SUNDAY BY SUNDAY, CYCLE A.   Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1995.  Page 54, paper, $11.95    ISBN 0814622860.

EXTRA NOTE:  POPE FRANCIS

In various homilies and catechesis, he speaks of the Samaritan woman as a symbol of the Church in mission – one who encounters Christ in her thirst and brokenness, then becomes an evangelizer to her own people. He emphasizes that Jesus does not begin with condemnation, but with a request: “Give me a drink.” For Pope Francis, this reveals a God who becomes needy in order to awaken our deeper thirst for living water.

He often highlights how the woman, once marginalized, becomes a missionary – leaving her water jar behind as a sign of new priorities. Her encounter with Christ transforms shame into witness.

JUSTICE BULLETIN BOARD

Is the Lord in our midst or not?

Exodus 17:7

Okay, whoever has not asked yourself this question, raise your hands. Hmmm, I don’t seem to see any hands. There are times in our lives when the Lord seems very distant. But, if you stop to think about it, these are probably the times when you were relying on yourself. The more self-sufficient we become, the less likely we are to hear or see God.

The Lord that we hear about in the readings today is comfortable talking and sharing with those on the margins, those whom society deems untouchable. It is interesting to ponder perfection being found among the imperfect.

Our late Pope Francis teaches that, The presence of God among men did not take place in a perfect, idyllic world but rather in this real world, which is marked by so many things both good and bad, by division, wickedness, poverty, arrogance and war. He chose to live in our history as it is, with all the weight of its limitations and of its tragedies. In doing so, he has demonstrated in an unequalled manner his merciful and truly loving disposition toward the human creature. He is God-with-us. Jesus is God-with-us. Do you believe this?. . .Jesus, involved himself with man to the point of becoming one of us, it means that whatever we have done to a brother or a sister we have done to him. Jesus himself reminded us of this: whoever has fed, welcomed, visited, loved one of the least and poorest of men, will have done it to the Son of God.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20131218_udienza-generale_en.html

How would you name the presence of Jesus in your life today? This is a good question for personal reflection. Other questions that you might ask yourself are: Do I echo the kind of love that God shows in my own encounters with the poor, oppressed, or marginalized? What holds me back? Lent is a good time to ask deep questions.

As you journey in reflection, contemplate these words from Servant of God, Dorothy Day: When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, His Son, in us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. (Modern Spiritual Masters—Ellsberg, Orbis. 2008)

In this way, we will always know that God is in our midst.

Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director

Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC

FAITH BOOK

Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home.

 From today’s Gospel reading:

(Jesus said to the woman) “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed, the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship God must worship in Spirit and truth.”

Reflection:

During Lent, regular churchgoers are invited to move beyond simply attending services or observing practices. Lent calls us to worship “in Spirit and truth”  –  to pray with sincerity, to come before God honestly, and to let the Spirit deepen our relationship with Him rather than just maintain habits.

So, we ask ourselves:

• When I gather for worship, do I come merely out of habit, or do I consciously invite God’s Spirit to renew my heart?

• Does the way I live during the week reflect the truths I profess in church on Sunday? Where might there be a disconnect?

• In what concrete way can I let my daily actions – home, at work, in the parish – become an extension of my worship “in Spirit and truth”?

 POSTCARDS TO DEATH-ROW INMATES

“One has to strongly affirm that condemnation to the death penalty is an inhuman measure that humiliates personal dignity, in whatever form it is carried out.”

--Pope Francis

Inmates on death row are the most forgotten people in the prison system. Each week I am posting in this space several inmates’ names and locations. I invite you to write a postcard to one or more of them to let them know that: we have not forgotten them; are praying for them and their families; or whatever personal encouragement you might like to give them. If the inmate responds, you might consider becoming pen pals.  

Please write to: 

James Campbell      #0063592 (On death row since 7/8/1993)

Daniel Garner          #0141374 (9/3/1993)

George Buckner       #0054499 (10/8/1993)

Central Prison   P.O. 247 Phoenix M.D 21131

(While the prison is in Raleigh mail for inmates is processed at this address)

For more information on the Catholic position on the death penalty go to the Catholic Mobilizing Network: http://catholicsmobilizing.org

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